Roald Dahl: Rishi Sunak joins criticism of changes to author's books
bbc.com
bbc.com
A fun fact I remembered this morning - even in 1984, Kipling is allowed to remain in party sanctioned literature (albeit altered)
I have been able to recall one possible ... indiscretion ... We were producing a definitive edition of the poems of Kipling. I allowed "God" to remain at the end of a line.
Orwell was an optimist as they say...
IngSoc was even a socialist party, he was perfectly aware of the authoritarian streak in his own ideology.
Hell, in Road to Wigan Pier he talked about how he understood why a lot of the people oppose socialism, even though he thought it'd be a no brainer to support it. He wasn't one of the poorly read, middling IQ graduates yelling about socialism we see out in force today.
A nitpick here - Orwell didn't have static views. The Orwell who fought in the Spanish civil war was not the same Orwell as the one who wrote 1984 - 1984 reflected his disillusionment with the ideology.
Orwell probably would have a problem agreeing with something on the other side of the aisle. The logic doesn't follow. Lots of people are highly critical of the Soviets. No one has to be a socialist and support the Soviets.
Orwell was always a socialist. 1984 was a mix of his problems with the Soviets and capitalism and right wing ideology. People shouldn't white wash Orwell.
> Hell, in Road to Wigan Pier he talked about how he understood why a lot of the people oppose socialism, even though he thought it'd be a no brainer to support it. He wasn't one of the poorly read, middling IQ graduates yelling about socialism we see out in force today.
People can say all sorts of stuff. It doesn't change what he was for and what his writing is for.
I'd like to see an example of these socialists you're talking about. Do you have some? I've personally not seen it. Being a socialist is harder than being a capitalist. I have to educate myself vs yelling about stuff and being okay with the status quo (relatively speaking).
For an example of how much more educated socialists have to be, see extremely popular left-wing commentator https://www.twitch.tv/hasanabi live 2-8 pm EST, 7 days a week. Typical political shows in the center or right (99% of media) are not as in-depth, do not critique capitalism, are not as entertaining, and the hosts don't have a fraction of the political knowledge.
To a large extent, it's probably more about the right (however you want to define it) being the historical establishment. In 2002, V for Vendetta made a lot of sense.
With the left as the current establishment and vector for authoritarianism, the same criticisms apply to them.
So I don't think it's really helpful to get caught up in the political alignment, it's more about where the power is.
The conservative party has controlled the UK government for 12 years now.
> So I don't think it's really helpful to get caught up in the political alignment, it's more about where the power is.
This is what many people on the right say to obfuscate from being something huge figures in history were vehemently against. No, not just power.
The issue is when you rewrite history and pretend it had always been like that. That's in 1984 territory.
It's his work, he can do with it whatever he likes and it remains his work. The "definitive" version is whatever the author says it is. It'd be a totally different thing if the change was made by others without his permission.
If Tolkien decided to change all the Orcs to Canadians, I’m sure it would be similarly poorly received, but it doesn’t really matter does it? Imagining hypotheticals and then pretending to be mad at them isn’t really good discussion, IMO.
1. Dahl had already made changes to the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The early editions had African pygmies as his free labour. I don’t think the world was “woke” back then.
2. This is being done by a corporate publishing house in order to maximise the revenue of one of its key IP assets. It’s not mandated by government/regulation; there is no viral social media furore or press campaign. It’s not censorship nor anything like 1984 where works are being revised and all traces of the previous version cease to exist.
in our e-book future that's simply not the case; older editions or 'per-correction' editions are hard to find, and often-times impossible without resorting to pirate channels.
This type of thing is already happening, but it's not raising red-flags for people because it's not being done in an overtly malicious way as in '1984', it's being normalized via things like electronic-only distribution of media, and it's being explained and OK'd via 'corporate revenue' as an excuse -- but what's really happening is that older media is being thrown away at an alarming rate, and not only for the sake of correctness or moral balancing.
2. How is this material?
You don’t know the motivations of the people making this change, and there’s no evidence that editing via “sensitivity readers” actually increases revenue.
There is, however, plenty of evidence of the ideological basis for these types of actions.
As for censorship ala 1984? The previous version will no longer be sold and will gradually disappear, and for new readers, the previous version will have effectively ceased to exist.
Never mind the potential automatic updating of ebooks.
Really, the core issue is copyright law again. There comes a point where something is so enmeshed in our culture that it can't be said to be "owned" by anyone anymore.
I’m guess Dahl books were selling less due to some groups not wanting to read about fat characters and whatnot so the estate and publisher wanted to make more money and stay on those reading lists.
Dahl has been dead for 30 years, it’s messed up that copyright is so long that his works have decades more until in public domain.
I don’t think this is woke, this is monopoly copyright maximizing for profit.
I’m sure if Michaelangelo’s David was under copyright, they would add on a fig leaf to maximize sales.
I think the quote that the family of Dahl should be ashamed is most apt. The publisher is some lame company, but there’s some nephew or other relative somewhere that wanted 5% more profit and defaced their relative’s art for a bit more money.
You're free to boycott the publisher, and everybody else is free to make fun of you for making a big deal out of a nothing burger. Hence, the culture wars continue.
A corporation redacting a work of art that they have a monopoly over to sell more copies?
I mean, it's legal. At least until the government punishes Penguin for monopolistic behavior
If Penguin wants to light their own public reputation on fire by sabotaging a work of art then so be it.
I can't trust them for historically accurate sources after this, with this book or any other
Nothing to see here folks.
This is simply a company trying to maximise their revenue from their purchase by taking a brand and fitting it into today's world. This isn't some government conspiracy to suppress thought or push an agenda.
To me it's not too dissimilar from movies doing remakes and changing the narrative, character and language used.
I myself, would prefer the originals to be reproduced so that they remain Dahl's stories.
Likewise, the government is perfectly within their rights to punish Penguin for other, unrelated monopolistic behavior
For any other book, how do you know that Penguin hasn't "corrected" it? A publishing company with this little regard for historical accuracy doesn't deserve to exist
>Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.
If I write some great novel and then my asshole grandson decides to stop distributing the original and starts distributing a rewrite he feels will sell more copies I'll haunt his ass. I refused to watch the C.S. Lewis film adaptions because they were against the authors explicit wishes and there's a difference between having the legal right to do something and the moral right to do something.
I recall that Roald Dahl LOATHED the changes to his story in the film version of Willa Wonka and refused to sell the rights to the sequel so I wouldn't at all take it for granted that he would have supported such extensive edits. If there's doubt if an author would have supported you editing their book, you should play it safe and not edit a dead authors book! If you must change it - you must continue distributing the original or make the original public domain to retain any SEMBLANCE of legitimacy.
And he was right. As much as I love the movie, and I do, it's very inferior to the book.
Beside the fact that changing books is just wrong, except for life threatening data.
Taking a bit of a detour, is it wrong to engage in death of the author style interpretations of text?
Also, there are multiple versions of American Gods in print and readers can choose which one to read. They are clearly marked. In this case the publisher is changing the only versions in print and no longer making the original versions.
I think that people changing artists work is usually wrong. If a mural artist changes their mural, that’s very different from McDonalds deciding to add in milkshakes. That doesn’t mean that changing art is categorically wrong. It just means that the latter case is wrong.
It’s just especially egregious to change a work when you aren’t the author because fundamentally any such editor is somebody who isn’t good enough to make their own classic but is arrogant enough to think they can improve an existing one. People see how people are abusing their legal right to something that’s part of the culture in the interest of their own greed and narcissism and see that as particularly egregious.
Yes. It's the author's work, and the author has every right to say what is the "definitive" form of their work. Nobody else has that right.
I think it's fine to alter and publish other people's work (setting aside copyright issues), as long as it's clear that the work isn't what the author intended.
I'd argue so. Given enough edits, you've written the Book of Theseus.
It's fine to not want to read such a book or read such a book to children. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is rather mean and dark for a children's book, that's a huge part of the appeal, I would just prefer a mean dark book to remain a mean dark book instead of trying to water down the story to cash in on it's existing commercial value while trying to make it blander and tolerable by more audiences. It's hardly just Augustus Gloop who is treated in a cruel way either, it's just that he by far seems to be getting the most sympathy from the editors, but the book doesn't really teach one to be kind to say... rich spoilt children either.
Changes like “But Augustus was deaf to everything except the call of his enormous stomach” to “But Augustus was ignoring everything” takes the punch and wit out of the story while not actually making it so children can't read between the lines. You're replacing a line that'll make children laugh at a fat character with one that just won't make them laugh at all and calling it an improvement.
I'd even be OK with the existence of a hacked-up version, as long as it was made clear that it was a derivative work and not the original.
At the very least, it's lying.
If this is accepted practice, it means we can no longer trust that just because a work has the same title and author listed, that it's what the author actually wrote. It means that if you want to read the author's work, you can't just buy it. You'll have to engage in research to see if it had been altered at some point and identify when the alteration happened so that you can know which printings really reflect the author's intentions.
The subsequent changes to the Harry Potter books, made both by the author and by the publisher, are not clearly marked.
Which means that it is done with the author's permission. That's fair.